Posted!

Join the Conversation

Comments

Welcome to our new and improved comments, which are for subscribers only.
This is a test to see whether we can improve the experience for you.
You do not need a Facebook profile to participate.

You will need to register before adding a comment.
Typed comments will be lost if you are not logged in.

Please be polite.
It's OK to disagree with someone's ideas, but personal attacks, insults, threats, hate speech, advocating violence and other violations can result in a ban.
If you see comments in violation of our community guidelines, please report them.

Deer Valley Unified School District has discontinued a policy of charging a deposit fee and an hourly processing fee for public-records requests after the Goldwater Institute questioned the legality.

District spokeswoman Heidi Vega said the district will no longer charge a $10 refundable deposit fee to begin processing public-records requests, or a $9.79 hourly processing fee. She said the district gave refunds to the people who paid the open-records fees.

"We want to make sure we are serving our public appropriately and consistently," she said.

The Goldwater Institute, a conservative Phoenix-based think tank, sent the district a letter in mid-March.

Jon Riches, an attorney for the Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation at the Goldwater Institute, asked district Superintendent James Veitenheimer to change the district's policies because they violated Arizona's public- records law.

"Our public-records laws ensure that government is open and transparent," Riches said in response to the decision. "... the Goldwater Institute is happy to see the district bring their policies into compliance with those laws."

Vega said the district implemented the policies in February after a presentation to the governing board. The purpose of the deposit, she said, was to streamline processing requests because the district would sometimes spend extensive time fulfilling records requests that were never picked up.

As of Feb. 11, the district had processed more than 200,000 e-mails related to public-records requests during 2013-14, according to a presentation Vega made to the governing board.

The purpose of the hourly fee, she said, was to help offset the cost of processing requests as they require extensive time to read, redact and print.

In his March letter, Riches argued the fees served as a barrier to general-public access and were an especially large burden for people unable to afford them.

The district does not have someone specifically assigned to process records requests, Vega said, but it has two temporary employees working four days a week to fulfill public-records requests.

Jennifer MacLennan, an attorney representing the district, sent a letter to Riches on April 1, saying the district is updating and revising its public-records policies.